Introduction
The holidays aren’t just about twinkling lights and cozy nights by the fireplace (although let’s be honest, those are pretty great, too!). They’re a golden opportunity for businesses to boost sales with effective holiday marketing campaigns and connect with customers on a deeper level.
Online Black Friday and holiday season spending is expected to shatter last year’s Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) record of $9.12 billion, and close to 222 million Americans (85%) plan to purchase gifts for friends and loved ones this holiday season, according to a new survey and analysis.
With so much competition, simply “being there” won’t cut it. So perhaps the most critical question for marketers begs to be answered—how can you rise above the noise and make your brand the gift everyone wants this year?
The answer is crafting clever holiday marketing campaigns that connect with your audience. This guide will unveil ten battle-tested holiday marketing ideas used by global brands like Boohoo, Puma, Taco Bell, Hinge, Burberry, Calvin Klein, Herschel, Starbucks, and more to transform their holiday marketing from “meh” to “magnificent.” We’ll explore everything from harnessing the power of email to creating personalized multi-channel marketing campaigns that resonate with individual preferences. Get ready to ditch the marketing Scrooge and embrace the spirit of holiday marketing success.
Understanding the Holiday Market
In a nutshell, holiday marketing campaigns are special promotions designed to capitalize on the increased spending during the holidays. They’re crucial for businesses because they can boost sales, awareness, and customer loyalty during this peak shopping period. The following are some key trends that will define the holiday marketing season:
Online Spending Skyrockets
Breaking Records: This year’s online Black Friday and holiday season sales are expected to shatter last year’s record of $9.12 billion.
Shoppers Ready to Splurge
Gift-Ready America: Nearly 85% of Americans (around 222 million) plan to purchase holiday gifts, with an average spend of $831.
Expanding BFCM Window
Early Bird Deals: Retailers will start their holiday campaigns earlier, with many starting in August. This will allow shoppers to plan their budgets and snag deals throughout the season.
Mobile Dominates
Smartphone Shopping Surge: Almost half (47%) of all U.S. online holiday sales will come from smartphones and tablets. Optimizing your website and mobile is thus crucial.
Power of Email Marketing
Email Sales Powerhouse: Triggered email campaigns, such as abandoned cart reminders, flash sales, newcomers, price drops, and more, will be sales powerhouses during the holidays, generating the most conversions.
Maximizing Inbox Commerce
Transform Traditional Channels: Email, WhatsApp, and RCS must be shoppable platforms. Integrate the complete shopper journey within these channels by incorporating app and web functionalities such as search bars, carousels, accordions, data collection forms, and payment windows.
Gen Z’s Spending Power
Rising Digital Force: These tech-savvy youngsters are poised to be a significant spending force. Appealing to their digital habits and social values is essential.
Booming “Silver Spender” Market
Retiree Retail Revolution: This group will prioritize experiences, travel, and health & wellness, making them a valuable target market.
Value-Conscious Shoppers Splurge
Treat Yourself Trend: Despite rising costs, many middle-class shoppers will treat themselves during the holidays. Highlighting experiences and products that enhance well-being can resonate with this group.
To learn more about such insights and stats, please read our blog post: Netcore’s BFCM Sales and Holiday Marketing Insights, 2024 Edition. Moreover, we recommend you download our comprehensive ebook, which consists of statistics and strategies to craft the perfect holiday marketing campaign all in the same place.
Now that we grasp what to expect from a consumer’s perspective this holiday season, it’s time to delve deep and understand the benefits of crafting the right holiday marketing campaigns. Here are some tips to craft them:
How to Make Your Holiday Campaign Winning Ones
There are several essential parts to successful holiday marketing campaigns. Each plays a role in grabbing your audience’s attention, getting them engaged, and boosting sales. Here’s a breakdown of the critical ingredients:
1. Set Clear Objectives
Why It Matters
- Focus and Direction: Clear objectives provide a roadmap for your holiday marketing campaigns, ensuring all efforts are targeted and effective.
- Measurable Success: With well-defined goals, you can track progress and measure the success of your campaign using key performance indicators (KPIs).
Clarifying your objectives keeps your efforts focused and helps you measure success. Netcore can assist in setting goals via the journey builder and testing multiple campaign variants. Advanced analytics and reporting enable you to evaluate and easily track your holiday marketing campaigns in real-time.
2. Know Your Audience
Why It Matters:
- Relevance: Tailoring your messages to specific audience segments ensures your holiday marketing campaigns resonate with the right people.
- Engagement: Understanding your audience’s preferences and behaviors helps create content that captures their attention and drives engagement.
Identify who you’re selling to, create segments based on what they like and how they shop, and evaluate which areas from your catalog they are ignoring. Tailoring your holiday marketing message to specific customer groups makes your campaign more relevant and effective.
Did you know you can leverage recency, monetary, and frequency metrics to develop a more holistic view of the shopper using advanced segmentation capabilities?
A typical RFM mix
3. Creative Content is King
Why It Matters:
- Differentiation: Creative content helps your brand stand out in a crowd of offers that look and sound alike.
- Engagement: Engaging content captures your audience’s attention and encourages them to interact with your brand.
Boring content gets ignored. Use eye-catching visuals, engaging videos, informative blog posts, and persuasive email copy to tell a story that resonates with your audience and inspires them to take action. Be creative in your holiday marketing campaigns to stand out from the crowd.
You can create beautiful, resonating messages across channels. Just take a look at our nudge library, for example. These can be modified thoroughly to suit your holiday marketing campaigns.
4. Personalize, Personalize, and Personalize:
Why It Matters:
- Customer Experience: Personalization makes customers feel valued and understood, enhancing their overall experience with your brand.
- Higher Conversions: Personalized offers and recommendations are more likely to convert shoppers through your holiday marketing campaigns, increasing sales.
Today’s customers expect brands to know them and cater to their preferences. Use data around their affinities and preferences to personalize your messages, offers, and product recommendations.
In your holiday marketing campaigns, you can create merchandise triggers with either ‘AND’ OR’ conditions. For example, you can make an audience for users who have added a product to a cart or a product to the wishlist but have not purchased it. This helps us achieve accurate pin-point messaging for these.
5. Timing is Everything
Why It Matters:
- Anticipation: Starting early builds excitement and keeps your brand top-of-mind as the holidays approach.
- Relevance: Timely promotions capitalize on peak shopping periods, maximizing your campaign’s effectiveness.
Don’t wait until the last minute! Start your holiday marketing campaigns early to build anticipation and keep the momentum throughout the season. Use data to find peak shopping times and plan your promotions accordingly.
Send Time Optimization (STO) is a powerful capability. It allows you to personalize the communication time for each user based on their engagement behavior with your brand. With STO, users receive correspondences at their preferred time, determined by past interaction patterns. For example, if a user consistently opens emails at 1:00 PM, the system will send the following email at 1:00 PM using STO, increasing the likelihood of them opening.
Now that we’ve uncovered the secret ingredients for creating the perfect holiday marketing campaigns let’s explore the ten best for inspiration as we prepare to craft our own.
The Ten Best Holiday Marketing Ideas to Take Inspiration From
1. Boohoo
Channel used – Email
Launching holiday marketing campaigns early is a strategic move that can significantly boost engagement. Boohoo’s early Christmas email campaign is a perfect example of this approach. By starting early, you can build anticipation and excitement among your customers.
Some tips for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Announce holiday promotions in your holiday marketing campaigns well in advance to create a buzz.
- Offer exclusive early access to holiday deals to make customers feel special.
- Share sneak peeks and teasers of upcoming sales to keep customers hooked.
- Use countdown timers to create urgency and encourage quicker conversions.
By integrating these elements, you can effectively capture your audience’s attention and drive early sales.
2. Puma
Channel used – Email
Puma’s holiday marketing campaigns comprised an email sent the morning before Christmas Day; this was a masterclass in last-minute holiday marketing. The subject line “Order before 2 pm EST for FREE overnight shipping” was used to highlight urgency. The flash-sale email was straightforward yet effective, featuring banners, secondary offers, a navigational bar, and social media icons.
Some tips for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Highlight last-minute offers and deadlines in your holiday marketing campaigns to create a sense of urgency.
- Keep the message simple and concise, focusing on the primary offer.
- Use eye-catching banners and visuals to draw attention.
- Include navigational bars for easy access to different sections of your site.
- Encourage sharing and engagement by incorporating social media icons.
This approach can help you drive conversions even at the last minute by tapping into the urgency and excitement of the holiday season.
3. Casper
Channel used – Inbox Commerce
Casper’s holiday marketing campaigns stand out for their unique design that resembles a clock app using toggles inside an email. This creative approach breaks the monotony of typical holiday emails, grabs attention, and brings in-app and web functionality to email.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- To stand out in a crowded inbox, use interactive components powered by technologies like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).
- Ensure the design aligns with your brand’s identity.
- Incorporate interactive elements like clickable images to engage recipients.
- Maintain a clean and straightforward layout to avoid overwhelming the reader.
This strategy differentiates your email from others and keeps the audience engaged with your brand.
AMP has enabled emails to function like mini apps and websites. Customers can search, navigate the different options, add to cart, and even track their orders via email.
Did you know? Netcore’s AMP email/automation helped Photobook Worldwide drive 400% ROI, increase interactions by 860%, and reactivate 100K+ dormant users.
Read the entire case study here
4. Burberry
Channel used – Website
Burberry is renowned for its classic British style, and its holiday marketing campaigns reflect this elegance. The 2022 campaign showcases the brand and its seasonal collections in a way that perfectly captures the holiday spirit using really beautiful and classy website banners on the home page.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Use storytelling in your holiday marketing campaigns to connect emotionally with your audience.
- Highlight your brand’s heritage and unique selling points.
- Incorporate seasonal themes to evoke the holiday spirit.
- Include interactive features like lookbooks or virtual try-ons to engage users.
Focusing on these elements can help create a campaign that resonates deeply with your audience and reinforces your brand’s image.
5. Feel Goods
Channel used – Website
Feel Goods used trust signals in their holiday marketing campaigns early in the customer journey, particularly on the homepage and category pages. This strategy was crucial in a sea of offers, helping to drive conversions by establishing trust early on.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Prominently displays trust badges, customer reviews, and security certificates.
- Engage customers in purchasing decisions with compelling offers and clear value propositions.
- Ensure consistent messaging to build trust and familiarity across all pages.
- Use clear and compelling CTAs to guide users through the purchase process.
Integrating these elements can significantly improve conversion rates by making customers feel secure and valued.
6. Starbucks x Uber Eats
Channel used – App
Plugging gifting into holiday marketing campaigns. During the holiday season, Starbucks’ collaboration with Uber Eats reestablished the brand’s presence without explicitly urging customers to buy gifts. This approach’s strength is its subtlety.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Encourage gifting subtly without overtly pushing sales.
- Collaborate with complementary brands to offer added value.
- Ensure seamless integration of the partnership within your marketing materials.
- Provide creative gift ideas and suggestions to inspire customers.
This strategy helps reinforce your brand’s relevance and encourages gifting in a natural and engaging manner.
7. Calvin Klein
Channel used – Email
The art of a proper abandoned search email lies in subtlety, the fact that you cannot bombard your shoppers with recommendations, what Calvin Klein did in their email holiday email campaigns was revolutionary – they provided product recommendations within the category searched by customers as well as best sellers.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Avoid overwhelming shoppers with too many recommendations.
- Provide product recommendations within the category searched by customers to ensure relevance and engagement.
- Include best-selling products in your recommendations to entice customers with popular choices.
- Integrate category-specific and best-seller recommendations for a balanced effect.
This tactic helps keep your email-triggered campaigns relevant and engaging, encouraging and improving your AOV.
8. Taco Bell
Channel used – Email
Taco Bell’s distribution of eGift cards as part of its holiday marketing campaigns was a perfect holiday marketing tool, tapping into the universal appeal of food. This approach made paying for someone else’s meal easy and practical, enhancing satisfaction.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Leverage the universal appeal of food to create practical and appreciated gifts.
- Highlight the high perceived value of eGift cards.
- Emphasize the convenience and practicality of digital gift cards.
- Offer personalized messages or themes to make the gift more special.
This strategy can help you create a memorable and appreciated gift option that resonates well with your audience.
9. Hinge
Channel used – Email
Hinge’s holiday marketing campaigns tapped into the sentimental nature of the holidays by asking members what they are thankful for while highlighting the brand’s recent achievements and growth.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Use sentimental themes in your holiday marketing campaigns to connect emotionally with your audience.
- Highlight recent achievements and milestones to build credibility.
- Ask engaging questions to prompt interaction and reflection.
- Express gratitude towards your audience to build a positive relationship.
This approach fosters a sense of community and reinforces your brand’s values and mission.
10. Herschel
Channel used – App
Theming is an effective way to set the tone for a perfect holiday marketing campaign. For example, Herschel themed their entire app with dark undertones to resonate with a young, tech-savvy crowd shopping for tech bags on Black Cyber Monday. They also highlighted various discount levels based on the minimum price ordered.
Some learnings for better holiday marketing campaigns:
- Creating a cohesive theme for your campaign can significantly enhance its impact.
- Customizing your campaign visuals and messaging to align with your audience’s interests and preferences can boost engagement.
- Display various discount levels for different spending thresholds to encourage higher-order values.
- Integrating thematic elements and strategic discounting into your campaign sets the mood and guides customers through an engaging and enticing shopping journey.
This strategy helps create a resonant atmosphere within your app, making your brand more relatable and engaging during the holiday season.
Conclusion
Crafting a compelling holiday marketing campaign is essential for standing out in a crowded market and driving significant sales during the festive season. Marketers can learn valuable insights into what works from the ten effective campaigns of brands like Boohoo, Puma, Taco Bell, Burberry, Hinge, Herschel and more. From early promotions to last-minute offers, and interactive emails to personalized messages, each element plays a crucial role in connecting with customers and boosting engagement.
The key takeaway is that creativity, personalization, and timing are paramount. Marketers must set clear objectives, understand their audience, and create engaging content that resonates personally. Advanced tools like Netcore’s segmentation and journey builder can significantly enhance campaign effectiveness, ensuring targeted and timely communication.
Please take a look at our blog for a deeper understanding of holiday marketing – Netcore’s BFCM Sales and Holiday Marketing Insights, 2024 Edition
This holiday season, don’t just aim to be seen; strive to be remembered. Make your brand the one customers turn to for holiday needs by implementing these proven strategies. For a more detailed guide on crafting the perfect holiday marketing campaign download our Holiday Marketing Guide now and prepare to make this holiday season your most successful!
To learn more about how Netcore can help you craft your first holiday marketing campaign click on the button below:
